


My Child

by baudown



Series: 221b Ficlets [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, A Study in Pink, Childhood, M/M, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 15:51:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2315030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baudown/pseuds/baudown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scent is simply sense-memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Child

Nanny feeds and bathes him; her fingers are knotty, palms rough and tender. Nanny sings him lullabies, and tells him tales of animals who talk. Nanny sits by his bed when he's ill, wiping his forehead with a cool, damp cloth. Nanny smiles fondly.  
"A leanbh," Nanny says.

 

Sherlock is eating his soft-boiled egg. "Drink your red," Nanny says. He blinks at her, confused. "Your _red_ ," she insists. One of her eyes is drifting. Her mouth is slack and wet.

"A stroke," Mummy explains. Mycroft clarifies: a disturbance of blood flow to the brain. She's unable to speak; her appearance altered. Sherlock will never see her again.

 

An odor penetrates the lab's synthetic smell. Faint, but familiar -- beeswax, laundered linen, toast. _Nursery smells,_ Sherlock thinks.

Mike is there, and with him, a man. The scent is simply sense-memory. Still, it's the man who's conjured it, somehow. 

The cane, the limp -- a soldier. Wounded, but not in the leg. Shoulder, perhaps? And lost. So lost he's lost the desire to be found.

All the jigsaw pieces before him, but they won't fit correctly together. There's something Sherlock is missing: a shape, a color, a sound. 

The words that spring to mind -- _destiny_ , and _fate_ \-- are concepts he's always disdained.

Odd, then, this sudden warmth, like the heat of an ember, long buried.


End file.
